Genetic changes can predict cancer up to 13 years in the future, according to new research.
Harvard and Northwestern University discovered that tiny but significant changes are already happening in the body more than a decade before cancer is diagnosed.
They found that the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes, which prevent DNA damage, had significantly more wear and tear in people who went on to develop cancer. In fact, in some cases they looked 15 years older.
Those caps, known as telomeres, were much shorter than they should be and continued to get shorter until around four years before the cancer developed, when they suddenly stopped shrinking. All the people with the changes went on to develop cancer.
"Understanding this pattern of telomere growth may mean it can be a predictive biomarker for cancer," said Dr. Lifang Hou, the lead study author and a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
"Because we saw a strong relationship in the pattern across a wide variety of cancers, with the right testing these procedures could be used to eventually diagnose a wide variety of cancers."
Although many people may not want to know that they will develop cancer in the future, it could allow them to make lifestyle changes to lower their risk. Stanford University is also working on a project looking at how telemores can be regrown.
However insurance companies warned that such a test could push up policy premiums.
Matt Sanders, in charge of protection insurance products at GoCompare, said people with such a diagnoses could be priced out of the insurance marker.
“If this test showed 100 per cent probability over a certain number of years then it could affect premiums. It would be the equivalent of living in a high theft area for someone looking for home insurance,” he said.
“Premiums could rise to a point where some people would simply be priced out. However if it was shown that diagnosing earlier could prevent cancer then that could bring down premiums.”
Aviva also said that continually monitored advances in medical sciences ‘ to ensure they are reflected in the premiums paid by our customers, where appropriate.’
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elomeres sit at the end of chromosomes, and protect the tightly bound strands of DNA
In the new study, scientists took multiple measurements of telomeres over a 13-year period in 792 persons, 135 of whom were eventually diagnosed with different types of cancer, including prostate, skin, lung and leukaemia.
Initially, scientists discovered telomeres aged much faster, indicated by a more rapid loss of length, in individuals who were developing but not yet diagnosed with cancer.
Telomeres in all the people who went on to develop cancer looked as much as 15 years older than those of people who were not developing the disease.
But then scientists found the accelerated aging process stopped three to four years before the cancer diagnosis.
Telomeres shorten every time a cell divides. The older a person is, the more times each cell has divided, and the shorter their telomeres.
Because cancer cells divide and grow rapidly, scientists would expect the cell would get so short it would self-destruct. But that's not what happens, scientists discovered.
“We found cancer has hijacked the telomere shortening in order to flourish in the body,” added Dr Hou.
The team is hoping that if it can identify how cancer hijacks the cell, then treatments could be developed to cause cancer cells to self-destruct without harming healthy cells.
The research was published in the online journal Ebiomedicine.
Question)
1. Do you want to know your cancer future?
2. If your company offered to pay for this test, would you do it? If not, what would you do if they required the test?
3. Health insurance companies could adjust insurance rates with results from this test. Who else would find the results useful? Do you think much would change in society?
4. If you learned that your girlfriend/boyfriend (wife/husbandwould) get cancer in 13 years, what would you do?
5. If your test result was good, would you share your result? What if the result was bad - who would you share the result with?
6. If you learned that your risk for cancer is very low, would you live more recklessly? What would you do?
7. What if the results told you that you would probably get cancer in about 10 years? What changes would you make in your life?
Topic2) App will let you 'smell' how your friends are doing
By Kim Young-jin
People love to see what their friends are up on social media. The question now is whether you want to smell what they've been doing as well.
That's what the people behind a new contraption called the "Ophone" which will allows people to send smells across the internet -- are banking on.
Imagine walking through a forest and wanting to share the verdant fragrances with a friend. Or eating a fantastic meal and wanting to make a loved one envious.
The technology is not yet available to the public, but when it is, it will require several elements. One will need to have an app to send the "oNotes" as well as receptor that will emit the smells.
The app will come with 32 smells, which can be combined to create hundreds of thousands of different scents. One wonders which scents will be needed to create the fragrance of "kimchi jjigae" or the smell of the Seoul on a hot day.
On Tuesday, Harvard professor David Edwards, the inventor of the app, will send an "oNote" from the American Museum of Natural History in New York to a fragrance chemist in Paris.
Eventually, Edwards believes that people could be sharing scents all the time via social media.
"Scent is the world's natural tweet, because it takes just a few seconds to get a scent," he was quoted as saying. "The notion of people saying, ‘I miss you in New York,' by sending a scent is really interesting and powerful. Or imagine taking a scent selfie and posting it on Facebook."
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/world/2014/06/182_159180.html
1. Do you think it is possible to make app sending scent through the smart phone?
2. If it is possible, what smells do you want to send to your friends?
3. What other creative app would come out in the future? Be creative!
4. Do you want to know what your friends are doing? when?
5. What other technology do you expect to be developed?